It seemed to hang in the air.
Sandy and Jerry drew their breath in sharply. They had the terrible sensation that there was nothing beneath the James Kennedy to support it, and that once this long, hanging pause had ended—it would drop, drop, drop. Slowly, they let their breath out.
The vessel had begun to right itself.
With the same slow, deliberate, rolling motion, it heeled over to port, and now it was Sandy and Jerry who rose in the air above the mate and who felt themselves sliding toward him. Again, it seemed that the James Kennedy would overturn, and the hanging sensation was repeated. But when the vessel had righted itself this time, it seemed merely to shiver—before plowing straight ahead.
Scrambling erect, the two youths stared at Mr. Briggs. The mate’s face had been drained of color and his little eyes glistened with fear.
“That,” he said, in a voice hoarse with awe and disbelief, “was a wave!”
Up above, in the pilothouse, Captain West had watched that monster swell come and go, and now even he was a trifle shaken as he mopped his brow in relief. He wondered what would have happened if that wall of water had struck them fore and aft, rather than abeam.
He gazed through his windows and wagged his head gravely. The winds still rose in violence. They whipped at the James Kennedy from every quarter, seeming to change direction every other moment like a cyclone gone mad. The seas were a battering confusion. The waves ran this way, the wind another. Between them, they tore at the ship’s superstructure and thundered against her sides. Sometimes two great waves would dash at each other from opposite directions, colliding with a great roar and a shattering shower of spray.
Captain West saw with alarm that the waves were increasing in height. They were already well past ten feet. They would go on to twenty, of that he was disturbingly certain—and after that?
After that, Captain West knew, waves and running seas of that height would batter the long, narrow, shallow James Kennedy until she broke in two. He no longer placed such great importance on staying out of port to make sure of Mr. Chadwick’s deal. He would have given anything, just then, to be safe and snug behind the breakwater at Buffalo.